


Foreign territory

by iridescentglow



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal (TV) RPF
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Smoking, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 19:24:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentglow/pseuds/iridescentglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mads, who has an open marriage, decides to introduce Hugh and Claire to the concept. With a threesome, obviously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foreign territory

**Author's Note:**

> For boring, logistical reasons, this story takes place in late 2013, during the filming of s2 of Hannibal. Yep, that’s right: in _the future._
> 
> Please assume italicized speech is Danish.

As Mads walked up the front path to Hugh and Claire’s rental home in Toronto, his phone buzzed in his pocket. With one hand, he answered the call and with the other he rapped on the front door.

“ _Hej,_ ” he said into the phone as the door swung open, the greeting doubling for Hanne in Copenhagen and Hugh in the flesh.

“Hi...” Hugh replied uncertainly.

“ _How are things, darling?_ ” he asked in Danish. “Am I late?” he asked in English.

“Oh...” Hugh said, eyes sliding to the big clock in the hallway. “Not _late_ , per se... An hour and a half, maybe...”

Mads chose to ignore the mild note of sarcasm in Hugh’s voice. When Hugh stepped aside to let him inside, Mads managed to simultaneously slide a cigarette from his breast pocket and give Hugh a man-hug.

He let go of Hugh and began to walk through the house in the direction of the living room, continuing his conversation to Hanne as he did so. Hugh trailed in his wake.

Mads tossed a few words of English over his shoulder. “Claire home?”

“No... She’s picking up the little one,” said Hugh.

Mads settled into an armchair in the living room. The room was light and airy, large windows revealing a suburban garden in the foreground and, in the distance, a view of the CN Tower and the Toronto skyline.

As Hanne chatted away on the other end of the phone, Mads contentedly lit his cigarette. He knew Hugh wouldn’t say anything about him smoking in the house (too polite, too British). Claire, as soon as she returned home, would tell him to take his filthy habit outside, and Mads found himself merrily anticipating her scolding.

Mads took the phone away from his ear for a moment as Hugh sat down in another armchair. “The wife,” he explained to Hugh. “I’ll get off soon. But you know how it is. Time zones. Barely spoken to her in a week.”

Hugh nodded and, in a stage whisper, he asked, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Beer,” Mads replied and returned briefly to his phone conversation.

“It’s five o’clock,” Hugh said with a slight wince.

“Five? Shit. Bring on the whiskey, then.” Mads banged his hand on the coffee table for emphasis.

Hugh left the room and returned a couple of minutes later with two beers. It was a reproach, Mads recognised. But, all the same, he’d managed to bump Hugh up from tea to beer, and that was all that really mattered.

Juggling his phone, cigarette and beer bottle, Mads drank deeply. He then posed a terribly serious question to Hanne – a question to which she replied with laughter. Mads joined in with the laughter.

Hugh, frowning slightly, toyed with the script on the coffee table: a not-so-subtle hint that they were supposed to be running lines. Hugh shifted and changed positions and took a baby sip of his beer and looked altogether… uncomfortable.

Mads reflected that only an Englishman could look uncomfortable in his own home. In fact, the only time Mads had seen Hugh Dancy look truly comfortable was when he was acting it for a role, or when his arm was around Claire. The rest of the time, there was an understated edginess that prickled at the surface of his skin. Mads thought he might like to taste it with the tip of his tongue.

“ _Are you wet?_ ” Mads asked in Danish and then listened for the answer.

“ _Well, what have you got?_ ” he asked after a moment. He took another swig of beer and licked the excess off his lips. 

“ _No, pick the other one_ ,” he said. “ _The purple one._ ”

Hugh, who was now ostentatiously flipping through his script, looked up at the sound of a low, monotonous buzzing which filtered through to his living room from Copenhagen.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Mads said to Hugh in English.

“ _Well, what are you waiting for? Put it in_ ,” Mads said in Danish.

Mads settled back comfortably in his chair. He downed the rest of his beer and listened as the vibrator whined in his bedroom 6,000km away.

“ _God, you’re so fucking sexy_ ,” he said into the phone. “ _Are you coming? I want to hear you come._ ”

Hugh had dropped the pretence of reading the script now. His eyebrows crept up his forehead, visibly torn between horror and amusement.

“ _Yeah_ , _come on,_ ” Mads said dreamily, “ _Come for me. Yeah_ …”

Then, when it was clear that he’d played his role and satisfied his wife, Mads hung up. Nonchalantly, he took a drag of his cigarette.

“Just talking about the weather,” Mads said. “It’s raining in Copenhagen.”

“I bet it is,” said Hugh with a breath of laughter.

*

To Hugh’s obvious relief, Mads turned off his phone following the call and opened his own copy of the script.

In the dwindling light of the day, they rehearsed. Mads sat with his hair raked back off his face, posture perfect. The beer made his English less crisp, but he felt the character of Hannibal pulse near the surface of his skin. The rest of the world fell away temporarily.

The spell was not broken until Claire returned home, toddler in tow.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, padding through the living room with Cyrus balanced against her hip.

“I think we’re done,” Hugh said, his gaze sliding from Mads to Claire. “Stay. Have a drink.”

Mads watched the intensity flow out of Hugh as he tilted his face up to receive a kiss from his wife. Cyrus scrambled happily out of Claire’s arms and into Hugh’s lap. And, before Mads’s eyes, Will Graham disappeared and Hugh Dancy took his place, genial and circumspect where Will had been prickly and raw.

For his part, Mads retained just a flicker of Dr Lecter as he stood up to greet Claire.

“It’s been too long,” said Mads.

He leaned into her personal space, one hand in the small of her back, and gave her a kiss. His lips landed at the corner of her mouth, not altogether by accident.

“It’s been two weeks,” Claire countered, patting him on the arm and turning away. “Which is just enough time for me to have recovered from the last time you were here.”

*

Together, they ate a lazy dinner, cobbled together from what was in the kitchen. Mads spent some time playing with Cyrus – mainly holding him upside down in a manner that made him screech with delight – until Hugh declared the child “overstimulated” and took him upstairs to bed.

“He says overstimulated as if it is a bad thing,” Mads remarked to Claire, who sighed and poured herself another glass of wine.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur of alcohol and conversation. The Dancy-Danes family was a family that liked to talk. And what they talked about was a truly astonishing mix of the highly philosophical and the utterly banal.

Hugh and Claire were a pair of odd ducks who seemed to get odder the more time they spent in each other’s company. Mads would wager they’d be eccentric bordering on insane by the time they reached 60 – and he would still be glad to be their friend.

*

“You’re a bad influence,” Hugh told Mads later.

“If you say so,” Mads replied, lighting a cigarette.

Mads stamped his feet to stay warm in the Canada cold. Claire had banished him outside to smoke and Hugh was kind enough to keep him company. The two of them loitered on the patio like a pair of inept burglars. 

“I have a meeting tomorrow,” Hugh continued. “With a producer. I’ll be catatonic at this rate.”

“I would argue”—Mads paused to inhale and then release a slow stream of smoke into the dark night—“that’s a reason to drink more. Forget tomorrow.”

“Dionysian bastard,” Hugh muttered, grinning.

However, Hugh took his advice, knocking back a slug of whiskey from his glass. Mads, who’d left his own (empty) glass inside, reached over and stole a sip (well, a gulp). He handed the glass back to Hugh, their fingers tangling together momentarily.

In order to keep steady, Mads slung an arm across Hugh’s shoulders. Suddenly much closer, he paused to examine Hugh’s expression – his big eyes, grey in the half-light, and gloriously unfocused; his relaxed bottom lip, numbed by too much alcohol. Mads smiled and looked away, casually aiming another breath of cigarette smoke in the opposite direction.

Idly, Mads thumbed Hugh’s collarbone using his free hand. A thought rose to the surface of his mind.

“What would you say if I kissed Claire?” asked Mads.

Hugh’s laughter – its mix of indignation and astonishment – was a delight.

“I’d say you should probably brush your teeth first,” replied Hugh.

Mads exhaled his cigarette smoke and then turned back to look at Hugh.

“What would you say if I kissed you?”

His thumb made another stroke of Hugh’s collarbone.

“I’d say—” Hugh began, and Mads watched the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped. “I’d say I’m married.”

“Me too,” Mads said with a smile.

“I’d say this is foreign territory.”

“I know a foreigner who can, _ah_ , guide you through it.”

Hugh dragged his tongue across his bottom lip, mind whirring visibly. Watching Hugh’s resolve slowly crumble was the best entertainment Mads had had all evening.

“I’d say… I’d have to talk to Claire,” Hugh said finally.

*

In the en suite of the master bedroom, Mads brushed his teeth with gusto.

In the next room, he heard the rise and fall of indistinct voices talking. Hugh and Claire. Talking about him. The thought made him smile as he spat white foam into the sink. It wasn’t that Mads craved attention. He just happened to attract attention and he was not above enjoying that fact.

Minty-fresh and smiling, Mads exited the bathroom and took a single step into the master bedroom. Hugh and Claire both looked up, their conversation ending abruptly.

“Let me guess,” Mads said to Hugh, his tone arch. “When it comes to the small matter of, _ah_ , engaging in sexual relations… you’re pro. She’s con.”

“Actually,” Claire spoke up, “I’m pro. He’s con.”

Claire smiled a cool smile that made Mads desire to know much, much more about Ms Danes.

“I’m not _con_ ,” said Hugh. “I’m merely putting forth the viewpoint that this requires more discussion. And… I don’t know. Maybe some sort of parliamentary inquiry. Just to make sure that it’s the best… course of action.”

Mads ignored him. He strode forward and took Claire in his arms.

“Ditch him,” he murmured, hearing Hugh’s splutters in the background. “Fuck me.”

Mads knew full well the effect he could have on women and, indeed, Claire seemed momentarily bamboozled. He took the opportunity to dip her ostentatiously, planting a stage kiss on her lips with a satisfying _smack_. When he righted her, she laughed and swatted him away.

“You sleazebag,” she said. “You goddamn sexy sleazebag. How your wife puts up with you, I have no idea…”

“Years of practice,” said Mads. “Years of understanding. I’d walk off the end of the earth for her.” The suddenly solemn note in his voice made both Claire and Hugh stop and stare.

Mads exhaled a long breath and then continued lightly, “When I suggested sleeping with the two of you, she was very approving…”

Claire rolled her eyes and turned away from the conversation. Hugh meanwhile reached out and put a placating hand on Mads’s shoulder.

“Listen,” said Hugh, sounding slightly harried and hiding it poorly, “I know this is your thing. Because you’re terribly open and continental and we’re… not either of those things. And I know you’re partly messing with me. Because it’s one in the morning and I’m… drunker than I should be. But I’m an old fashioned kind of guy and I think vows mean something and I think… I think…”

“I think your wife is getting undressed,” Mads said mildly, looking past him.

Hugh swivelled to watch as Claire rolled her tights down past her knees. She wriggled free and cast them aside. 

“I think you two need to stop talking,” Claire said, swatting at the nape of her neck to find the zipper on her dress.

Mads, ever the gentleman, immediately moved to help her. He took his place behind her, deft fingers teasing apart the teeth of the zipper.

“Hugh, honey, you didn’t sign a death warrant when you married me,” said Claire. “You just have to keep loving me. That’s just about the only vow I care about.”

“In my experience,” Mads said, his hands slipping inside Claire’s open dress, “the act of _sharing_ can be quite a… _ah_ … revelatory avenue into new intimacy.” He bent to drop a kiss at the curve of Claire’s neck.

“You really are a sleazebag,” Hugh burst out, his outrage chased with laughter.

“Maybe a little,” Mads said lazily, as he helped Claire out of her dress.

Claire, resplendent in mis-matched underwear, extended an arm and gently tugged Hugh toward her (toward _them_ ).

“You just have to keep loving me,” she whispered intently to Hugh, drawing him into a kiss.

As Mads watched them kiss, he thought of Hanne. He pictured her, six hours ahead in time, asleep in their bed and dreaming of world domination. A lot of what came out of his mouth, he had to admit, was bullshit. But never his love for Hanne. Never that.

Hugh emerged from kissing Claire looking flushed and pliable. Mads angled his head toward Hugh and waited. He didn’t have to wait long before Hugh grabbed him, kissed him defiantly, and then let go.

There was a definite moment when Mads saw Hugh stop and wait. Visibly, Hugh waited for the bottom to fall out of his world. He waited for condemnation from the powers that be. Nothing at all happened, in fact – except that the pause gave Mads time to slide closer, transforming himself into a solid, immutable presence in Hugh’s personal space.

Hugh shook his head, exasperated. It was in that moment Mads took the opportunity to seduce him into a real kiss. When their lips met, it was sloppy, carnal kissing. Denied gratification seeped out of Hugh with every hungry, wet kiss.

During the breathless pauses between kisses, Mads saw Claire press herself against Hugh’s back, lithe as a cat. It was a sensation that caused a whimper to escape Hugh’s lips – and prompted him to kiss Mads harder. Claire’s fingers trailed up the back of Hugh’s neck and pushed into the thatch of hair behind his ear.

Mads – lover, sleazebag, Dionysian bastard – met Claire’s gaze briefly and saw her eyes glitter expectantly. 

This was not, Mads reflected, a bad way to spend an evening.

Not at all.


End file.
